Where is the epicentre of goth culture? Where did the
flickering flame first ignite, to be carried across the globe by the early
disciples? Some would suggest that the (then) industrial city of Leeds in the UK, from
which The Sisters of Mercy rose and reverberated in the early 1980’s is the
true spiritual home of goth, whilst others would trace the culture all the way
back to Vlad the Impaler in ancient Transylvania, allegedly the inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula.
Whichever school of thought you subscribe to, the impressive
new album Cu Foc ( “with fire” in Romanian) by Leeds’ foremost current goth
act Byronic Sex & Exile therefore comes with an impeccable goth pedigree,
and is a suitably grandiose project, including a three-part song cycle based on
translated Romanian poetry of the gothic tradition.
Byronic Sex & Exile (BS&E) is the latest project by
Leeds’ very own “Mr Goth”, Joel Heyes, the brainchild of the Goth City events
which have successfully added roots, gravitas and renown to the city’s rightful
claim to be the musical birthplace of the enduring genre, exposing the sad reality
of what in my view have been the occasional half-hearted attempts by the city’s official institutions to
capitalise on its global cult reputation.
Cu Foc has the makings of a fascinating cultural
project worthy of study, one might think, but musically the album is a very strong
contender in its own right. Stunning album closer Eternity sees Heyes
channelling vintage Peter Murphy over a classic acoustic descending riff,
whilst Your Name On The Wind (which also featured on the Opera from
the Wastes EP) is zeitgeist-grabbing up-beat coldwave dark twang, with
another plaintive Heyes vocal. The album’s focal point however is the
three-part song cycle, Luceafărul with Heyes in best Nick Cave
lounge lizard form over a melancholic but undeniably gothic piano motif at the
beginning of Part I before it develops into a more cinematic Pink Floydesque
guitar and synth soundscape. Part II is up at 160BPM, before Part III with its
more subdued tempo completes the cycle. Of the other standout tracks, album
opener Cu Foc I possesses a Bunnymenesque brooding intensity, whilst Timisoara
Eyes boasts a classic goth guitar intro and Nosferatu In Furs
continues the album’s eclectic style with the charm of an off-beat Berlin
waltz.
Although clearly a man not afraid to don a frilly white
shirt or post a smouldering selfie, the dandyish Heyes skilfully pitches the
project with self-deprecating wit, using the same dry humour evident in his
YouTube A Goth Guide to Leeds in describing BS&E as “romantic
byro-goth for the discerning aristocratic rebel”, and crucially avoiding the ridiculous
self-important pomposity of, say, Merciful Nuns. This album also introduces a
Western audience to poets whose work had previously been inaccessible for
reasons of language, and explores aspects of Transylvanian culture which go
beyond Dracula stereotypes, a concept which Heyes hopes to explore further in
his forthcoming Ph.D. project, which he is currently crowd-funding.
Frustrated like all acts by their inability to perform the
new songs live for the time being, this Friday (22nd May) at 8 p.m. (UK
time), BS&E will be live streaming a show from “the relative comfort of
their gothic crypt”, presenting some of the songs from Cu Foc in torch
song cabaret style, with donations encouraged to the Leeds refugee charity PAFRAS for
which he has already raised huge sums of money through previous gothic ventures.
In the words of the man himself, “Put on your best cape, grab a goblet of wine
and sit back for a decadent session of True Kult Gothery”!
Link to BS&E Bandcamp
Link to this Friday’s event: Cabaret Cu Foc: a Carpathian rhapsody
_________________________________________________________________________________
1. You’ve previously been involved in more industrial punky
projects like Action Directe or full-on dark “goff” rock like Quasimodo before
starting up BS&E about four years ago. Did you just feel the need to do
something a little more brooding and atmospheric?
Joel Heyes: First off, thank you very much for the
interview! I guess this all started back when I decided in 2011, shortly before
Action Directe split up for the second time, that they weren’t going to be my
main project anymore. Up until that point AD had been the sole depository for
all my writing (for good or ill!) and at that point I decided to work on many
different, specific musical projects instead. Quasimodo were very much the
first and most successful of these, but there were also I Demand Satisfaction,
Carpathian Love Gods, Electroslav, Viet Bong, and Byronic Sex & Exile was
very much conceived as one of those projects. Having done one E.P on 2015 I
assumed that would be it, but it was only in 2017 that I began to see the
potential of a project that could reconnect goth to it’s cultural &
political roots, so that’s when things really took off with BS&E.
2. Who were your musical influences for BS&E in general
and this new album in particular?
Joel Heyes: Although I didn’t realise it at the time,
BS&E is very much influenced by overt ’90 gothic rock – London After
Midnight, Horatii, Nosferatu, Rosetta Stone – as well as proto-goth influences
such as Bowie, Iggy Pop, Diamanda Galas. The Damned and Lords of the New Church
are probably the two big influences for everything really. In terms of the
album, musically I was trying to broaden the pallet so there’s some Dead Can
Dance and Carpathian folk & classical in there too.
3. The “dandy” end of goth can seem a little po-faced and self-important at times, yet you use humour whenever talking about BS&E,
for example describing the project as “romantic Byro-goth for the discerning
aristocratic rebel”. Do you think that it’s important to keep things
tongue-in-cheek?
Joel Heyes: It’s important to have a sense of humour
about whatever you do, because you’re meant to be having fun. One of the great
paradoxes about the goth scene and in fact any alternative subculture is that
the people most opposed to seeming po-faced are the ones who are very
humourless about it – people really go a long way not to appear sincere, and
get very annoyed at anyone who is. BS&E show that even if you are deadly
serious about poetry & politics that you can still have more fun with it
than those acts who are intent on not being ‘pretentious’. Self-consciousness
really is the UK goth disease.
4. The new album Cu Foc has a Romanian title and several
songs are based on Romanian poetry. Was it through the Dracula story that your
interest in that country developed?
Joel Heyes: Obviously vampire culture is the
gateway to an interest in Transylvania, but I’d been a longtime student of
Romanian politics (I did my MA dissertation on it) so it’s been a longstanding
interest. In a way, the Dracula element is probably the least interesting thing
about the place for me these days. The first rough mix of Cu Foc had
loads of vampire film samples, and in the end I ditched them all before the
final mix because I didn’t want people to see this as another bog-standard
Dracula tribute – it got in the way of the essence of the thing.
5. Was your aim in basing the lyrics on these poems to bring
Romanian poets to a Western audience or did they just seem like potential
lyrics when you read them?
Joel Heyes: I think in the same way as ‘Gothism’ (the
first album) it was about reconnecting the concept to its true energy – the
creative source. So I wanted to look behind the Dracula stuff to the real
gothic heart of Carpathian culture, as even without the vampire stuff
Transylvania is an incredibly interesting and creative place. The poems and
ideas from Romania that are on the album are really about bringing out the real
gothic elements of Carpathian culture to a wider audience. Why Eminescu isn’t
as popular as Poe or Stoker amongst a western goth audience, I’ll never know.
6. You’re planning to base your Ph. D thesis on Dark Tourism
in Romania. Can we expect further Carpathian influence on BS&E in the
future?
Joel Heyes: Probably not, as I like each album and
project to be a distinct entity – for me, creative projects have a shelf life
of about 18 months and then I start to look at the next one. So although I’d
like to showcase the Cu Foc live show at least once later in the year,
it’s not a project I’m planning on living in for much longer – although I am
considering an album of remixes & reworkings from Cu Foc, as there’s
a lot of life in these tracks yet.
7. Apart from for the band, you’re also well-known as the
organiser of the annual Goth City Festival/Event in Leeds, and you’ve recently
announced a change to holding it in the summer in future to avoid other
high-profile events in the region such as Infest and the various Whitby events.
How big do you think that the Leeds event could become in the future – the
British equivalent of WGT for example?
Joel Heyes: Leeds is the biggest city in the UK to hold a
regular goth festival, and it’s clear that we have the venues, transport links,
cultural legacy, local scene and accommodation to make a larger event
successful. So if it’s going to work anywhere, it’s here. But the challenge is
to build it on a sustainable, non-profit basis – we’ve raised £10,000 for our
preferred charity at Goth City in four years, and we want that to be the
benchmark for what we do. If HyperGlobalMegCorp come in to exploit the
commercial potential it’d be a disaster for the UK scene, so it’s a matter of
steadily building.
In terms of the summer move, we have no summer goth
festival in the UK in June/July, and the Aug-October calendar for goth events
is too congested. This way we can use many of the great outdoor venues in
Leeds, which we can’t do in the winter.
8. You did a video tour of goth Leeds on YouTube last year
that went down well. Thinking of your Ph D topic, do you think goth tourism
could be a major contributor to the local economy? Do you think that Leeds as a
city currently does enough to capitalise on its goth musical heritage?
Joel Heyes: Leeds is only just beginning to wake up to
this – we’ve done a lot of work with our colleagues at Leeds Festival of
Gothica to create a goth heritage network from scratch, and local tourism
bodies have started to engage with us on it. So potentially yes, very much so.
But the main issue was how Leeds goth sees itself – when I began Goth City I
was told point blank that a goth festival would never work in Leeds, and a lot
of people feel ownership of the culture and legacy of the scene here, so it’s
never been easy. There are dozens of different interest groups pulling in
different directions, so as yet there isn’t one voice we all speak in. We want
to celebrate Leeds’ goth legacy, but as a living culture and not a retro
activity.
9. How would you describe the strength of the scene in the
city at the moment (pre-lockdown, obviously!)?
Joel Heyes: It’s probably never been heathier in decades
– bearing in mind we have Goth City, Leeds Festival of Gothica, Carpe Noctum
which is the largest regular goth club night in Britain, Absinthe Promotions
who are now running Tomorrow’s Ghosts at Whitby, Bunker 13 who cater for the
EBM end, not to mention in Yorkshire generally we have Infest, Night Shift,
Shadow of the Castle. This is as good as it gets, really.
10. Having had to cancel your live shows to promote Cu Foc,
you’re hosting a live event on Friday 22nd raising funds for PAFRAS. Can you
share a few more details about what can we expect?
Joel Heyes: I’m trying to see what is possible in a
performance setting from my home in Leeds during lockdown, so this will be a
test to see what I can do – expect a lot of the tracks from Cu Foc that
I can perform in a stripped-down, torch song format. I hope to start doing
regular, one-off shows around new concepts every month during lockdown if it
goes well, although nothing replaces actually being on stage.
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